


Haunted Houses Are Full Of More Than Just Ghosts

by emily_420



Category: Gintama
Genre: 3z, M/M, somewhat horror-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 23:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3548003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily_420/pseuds/emily_420
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Date (or is it) night with Kamui and Sougo is never romantic, but this crosses a line. </p><p>(170cm trio go to a supposedly haunted house for fun. It goes as well as you might imagine.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted Houses Are Full Of More Than Just Ghosts

The door creaked open at a small, experimental push. Takasugi and Sougo shared a glance before the three of them slowly – not hesitantly, they were there for fun – entered the abandoned house, Kamui waving the torch around as he walked. It was clear even from the garden they'd just crossed through that no one had lived there for years; the grass brushed at their ankles and overgrown bushes leapt out at them as they passed. On the inside, it smelt dusty and cloying. The floors, at least in the entranceway, were wooden and bare; the walls were a sad light brown, heavily abused and covered in graffiti. Mostly hearts with letters in. They _had_ been told it was a popular date spot – not that that's why the three of them had come, of course.

“Well, it's definitely abandoned,” Sougo commented at a normal sound level, disregarding the idea that you had to whisper in haunted houses. “Hey, ghost,” Sougo called, “your house is pretty filthy, you know? How do you feel about that? Aren't you ashamed?”

“Oi, oi,” Takasugi scolded him, “what are you doing? Stop it.” Takasugi didn't think that agitating any residing spirits would be a good start to anything. He wasn't scared about what might happen to them, of course – but if the ghost got angry and kicked them out, the experience wouldn't last very long. Obviously.

“What?” Sougo said as they discovered the kitchen, Kamui, for some ungodly reason, immediately heading for the fridge. Maybe it was a homing instinct. “We're trying to see a ghost, right? Might as well talk to it.” 

“I agree, actually,” Kamui said, slamming the fridge door shut in dissatisfaction. The light inside it hadn't even worked, the shelves bare. “Although maybe not taunting it would be a bit better.”

“You think so? Then do you reckon we should use this?” Sougo said, pulling the ouija board he'd insisted on taking along out from where he'd tucked it under his arm.

“I wanna look around more first...” Kamui said, and Sougo shrugged.

“Suit yourself,” he said, sticking it back under his arm.

Back in the entranceway, they headed for a passage to the right of a staircase leading to the second floor. “Where do you wanna–” Takasugi started asking, only to be distracted by running into Kamui's back because the other boy was studying an ornate light fixture on the ceiling instead of showing them the way with the torch. “Oh, come on,” Takasugi snatched the torch from him, shunting Sougo aside so he could lead the way.

There were three doors on that side of the stairs, one straight ahead and one on either side. “Well that's–” Takasugi waved the torch across the door underneath the staircase, “–probably a closet, so of the other two where do you want to go?”

“I don't care,” Sougo said, looking to Kamui in the dark.

Kamui hummed thoughtfully, pointed straight ahead. “That one, I think.”

They went towards it, the floorboards creaking ominously and pretty stereotypically, in Takasugi's opinion. This door was a bit jammed, they had to let Kamui kick it open, which couldn't be good karma, but nothing they ever really did was good karma.

Takasugi swept the light around the room, revealing wash tubs, buckets and what looked to be an indoor clothesline.

“A laundry,” Sougo said flatly. “Greeeat.”

“Well, what were you expecting?” Takasugi asked, grumpy as always when dealing with Sougo.

“I dunno, a bedroom? All the good stuff usually happens in bedrooms. Ah, not like that – well, like that too, I guess.”

Kamui laughed a bit at that, said, “Where d'you think the bedrooms are, then?”

Upstairs, a door slammed shut. “Upstairs?” Sougo said.

“The ghost hates your dirty jokes,” Takasugi said blithely, leading the march out of the room like a mother duck. They had to push through some cobwebs on their staircase, and there was a faint scuttling sound coming from somewhere nearby, and at one point Sougo tried to trip Kamui on the stairs, but they got up there.

From the landing, there was a hallway that ran the width of the house. Takasugi was contemplating which door to take as he analysed them under the torchlight when there came a scratching noise from his left, sounding as if it was on the other side of the wall.

“The hell is that?” he said, and was about to continue when he felt something jab into his left side. Takasugi jerked away from the touch, growled, “Which one of you _bastards..._ ”

“Oh, my bad,” Sougo said, not sounding sorry at all; on the contrary, it was as if he was holding back the urge to laugh.

“I'm gonna _fucking–_ ” Takasugi started, cut off by a door to the right banging open.

After the brief, eerie silence that followed, Kamui said, “Let's go in there.”

“Uh.”

“C'mon, it'll be fun,” Sougo said, shunting Takasugi forward.

It really was a bedroom that time, complete with a worn old crib, the pale pink paint peeling, and a cracked, creepy doll sitting upright in a wooden chair by the crib.

“Well, this is certainly weird...” Kamui said, poking around the room, Takasugi following him with the torch like a searchlight. “But I don't see any ghosts?”

“Y'know, I've been wondering, but why is there a western-style house here, anyway?” Sougo asked, holding the doll and studying it closely, giving a few experimental pokes.

“Isn't that part of the mystery?” Takasugi tried to remember what he'd overheard at school, the specifics of it, but it was no good – those memories were gone with the wind, laughing at him as they ran into the sunset.

Sougo hummed, before perking up as he said, “Ouija board, then? Can we do that now?”

“Ooh, yeah,” Kamui agreed, sitting down cross-legged on the bare, dusty floor in the middle of the room. “Do you have the tile thingy or do we need something else?”

“I think I've–” Sougo rummaged in his uniform's pockets, wearing a quizzical expression. “Ah, there we go. Takasugi, you sit down, too, we need three people for it to work.”

“Yeah,” Takasugi said, sat down across from Kamui and next to Sougo, stood the torch on its end so that it illuminated a narrow circle in the middle of the dusty bedroom.

“Okie doke,” Sougo said, placing the tile in the middle of the board, leaving an index finger pressing down on it. “So what do we start with?”

Kamui placed a finger on the tile. “If anyone's there, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sougo said, looking at Takasugi expectantly. Takasugi stuck his finger there too with a huff.

Sougo cleared his throat. “Ah, okay so – is there anyone else here right now?”

The tile moved slowly toward the 'yes' at the top corner of the board. Takasugi knew that he himself wasn't moving it, but it was hard to tell if the other two were fucking around or not – Kamui looked mildly surprised, mostly like he was really anticipating what was to come, and Sougo – well, you could never tell with Sougo.

Kamui leaned forward, asked very seriously, “What's your favourite flavour of ice cream?”

Laboriously, the tile spelt out 'mint choc-chip'.

“Damn,” Kamui said, “there's no making that up.”

“Don't waste time with ridiculous questions,” Takasugi said. Then, “What's your name?”

The board answered, 'Does that really matter?'

“Who is this asshole?” Takasugi frowned, leaning forward. “Are they even able to answer like that? One of you is doing this, aren't you?”

“No way,” Sougo said innocently. Then, to the board, “How did you die?”

Before the answer could finish spelling itself out – or being spelt out, Takasugi had his doubts – Kamui pointed out that he could hear something back on the staircase. They took their fingers off the tile at the same time – the tile stopped in place, like Takasugi had expected – and faced the doorway, Takasugi needing to twist around on the spot. They could hear slow, loudly thumping footsteps drawing closer.

Someone's clammy hand grabbed at Takasugi's, and he looked around to see Sougo, suddenly nowhere near being composed.

“...What are you doing?” Takasugi whispered, the footsteps still pounding their way up the stairs.

“Nothing.” Sougo's voice was shaking.

“Uh, that's my hand, though.”

“Yeah?”

“...You're holding my hand.” (They'd never held hands before, any of them, despite being more than a few months into their relationship.)

“No I'm not.” Sougo's voice was getting a bit louder. Takasugi wanted to hit him, but didn't want to cause any commotion.

“That's–“ Takasugi could clearly feel Sougo's stubby fingernails digging into the back of his hand. “Whatever. Who is that though?”

“A ghost?” Kamui suggested hopefully.

“Ghosts aren't solid, don't be ridiculous.”

Who or whatever it was was coming toward the room they were in down the hallway. Sougo's grip on Takasugi's hand grew tighter than ever. Kamui looked like Christmas had come early.

The door creaked open, slowly revealing a shadowy figure.

The figure clicked a torch on, lighting up their own terrifying face – thick-looking green skin, huge, blood-thirsty looking canines, _horns,_ and piercing bright red eyes that might have belonged to the devil himself.

They started to speak, their voice gravelly and low: “What are you children doing–“

Takasugi didn't hear the rest over Sougo screaming and dragging him right out the door by the hand, somehow managing to push past the monster (?) in his state of heightened fear. They flew down the stairs in the dark, shot out the entryway, through the garden and onto the pavement, under the streetlights and with the soothing background noise of passing traffic to calm Sougo down.

He didn't seem to have taken well to the experience though, given that his face was pressed, somewhat awkwardly considering that they were the same height, into Takasugi's neck. Sougo was still clutching his hand, the other one grasping at the red shirt Takasugi wore underneath his uniform.

Takasugi looked down at him, not unkindly, said, “Aren't you a sadist?”

Sougo was winded as he said, “Because I don't do well under pressure! Isn't that obvious?! And you call yourself my–“

Takasugi rubbed his back. “Yeah, I know."

They stood like that for countless minutes until Kamui meandered out to them, called, “Hey, that guy was really nice! You didn't need to run!”

When Sougo looked up at Kamui, Takasugi thought for a second he saw his red eyes glowing with something close to rage, yet quite different, and mixed with another emotion Takasugi felt himself when he was with them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm maybe extrapolating on sougo's weak side a bit too much, but he's like, what, sixteen and in highschool? afford me this


End file.
